Misc. Thoughts, Studies, and Blog Posts

No updates this week, as I am traveling and away from home, where I weigh myself. However, I can feel my pants getting looser by the day, so I am confident I have lost weight. Below are some jumbled thoughts and ramblings from my surfing throughout the low carb blogosphere.

I have received two books in the mail from Amazon.com that I am currently reading: Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon and Mary Enig and The Art and Science of Low Carbohydrate Living by Stephen Phinney and Jeff Volek. I haven't had time to read them yet, but will report on them when I do. The first one, Nourishing Traditions, is actually a cookbook which explains the philosophy behind the Weston A. Price Foundation's view on achieving perfect health. As I have flipped through it, it looks very interesting and unlike other cookbooks I have referenced. The second book is a How To book, which explains the ins and outs of the low carb lifestyle. It is targeted towards health professionals.

In news from around the low carb blogosphere, Chris Kresser of the Healthy Skeptic has a new post on natural childbirth. My daughter has been educating me on natural childbirth (I've commented on the topic before), and I find it interesting that a man has written on the topic. His wife makes several comments about the topic (e.g., here, here, and here) in the comments section and he is fully supportive of the procedure. In fact, it seems logical, given his focus on natural health and the paleo diet.

Denise Minger of the Raw Foods SOS blog tweeted about a study showing a link between antidepressant drugs (e.g., Prozac, Zoloft, Paxil, Celexa) and the occurrence of autism. Caution: this is an observational study which shows correlation, not causation. Nevertheless, it is an interesting hypothesis that warrants further study.

Tom Naughton of the Fathead blog writes that most vegetarians become ex-vegetarians. He reviews a news article on the subject and makes some interesting conclusions. People who chose vegetarianism for ethical reasons are now eating meat (prepared in an ethical manner, e.g., grass fed, not feedlot meat). Poor health from the vegetarian diet is the number one reason people go back to eating meat.

A recent rodent study showed that a low carb diet helps prevent weight gain, cancer development and progression, and tumor growth.

Another study shows that fake fat (like Olestra) causes more weight gain than real fat. It was fun watching the authors spin the results of this study!

Shaving, Heart Disease, and Observational Studies

Do men who shave daily have fewer heart attacks than those who only shave once every two or three days? This is the finding of at least one study. However, Michael R. Eades, M.D. uses this example to show people the difference between observational scientific studies that generate hypotheses and causal scientific studies that generate reproducible scientific facts.

The shaving study is an example of an observational study. When you dig deeper, as Eades does, you see that it is not shaving which is linked to fewer heart attacks, but the attributes of men who shave more often that lead to fewer heart attacks. So, says he, correlation is not causation. This is a great lesson to remember, the next time a scientific study du jour is released that makes some claim. If it was an observational study, it merely generated an hypothesis, which needs further testing.